57TH ANNUAL CAL-NEVA CHAPTER MEETING 2023, Long Beach, CA

February 28 – March 3, 2023

The 57th AFS Cal-Neva chapter annual meeting was a huge success! The theme this year was “Connecting the Mosaic”. In today’s changing climate, we need a diverse set of voices in fisheries to confront the many challenges that fish are facing today. Connecting the mosaic is all about connecting with people of diverse backgrounds in order to connect the fish to their conservation needs.This was achieved at the meeting by hearing from 3 different plenary speakers speaking on a diverse set of topics from shark research, DEI work with the Marine Diversity Program, to finding meaning as an Early Career researcher followed by a panel featuring 3 outstanding early career scientists. 

We then kicked off the rest of the meeting with more presentations on a variety of topics followed by a casual social at the Aquarium of the Pacific before heading into the poster session. This was a full meeting with 3 days of over 100 presentations, 30 poster presentations and over 190 attendees! There were so many incredible student talks and posters with the student winners listed below.

Many Thanks….

On behalf of the planning committee and the executive committee, we cannot thank you all enough for attending another successful meeting. These meetings take a lot of work from our all-volunteer group but it is highly rewarding to see a meeting come together as successfully as this one was. Please consider joining us in the planning for the next one as a great way to get more involved with the Cal-Neva chapter! This is a fun way to give back to our wonderful organization. Plus, this is a really fun group to work with!

We’d also like to thank our generous donors for raffle prizes and appreciate the support that was provided by the following donors and sponsors: Oregon RFID (including additional support for student travel), EBMUD, Environmental Science Associates (ESA), HELIX environmental planning, CA Department of Water Resources, Metropolitan Water District, Stantec, Sonoma County Water Agency, California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Award Recipients

Chapter Awards

Cailliet-McCosker Marine Fishes Award – Dr. Greg Cailliet

Moyle-Deacon Native Fishes Award – Edwin Philip Pister

Special Contribution – Ramona Swenson, Eva Bush, Kelly Souza, and Matt Young

Student Awards

Poster presentation

1st – Ann Holmes (UC Davis)

2nd – Zachariah Merson (CSU Long Beach)

3rd – Francine De Castro (UC Davis)

Katrina Martens Memorial Award  – Russel Ly (UC Merced)

 

Oral presentation

1st – Kimberly Luke (UC Davis)

2nd (tie) – Elsi Platzer (UC Davis)

2nd (tie) – Madison Heard (UC Santa Barbara)

Nina Jo Kogut Memorial Award– Brian Williamshen (UC Davis)

Travel Awards

Emily Chen (UC Berkeley)

Christian Denney (UC Davis)

 By Miranda Bell-Tilcock, AFS Cal-Neva President-Elect